


Working Title

by Wheat From Chaff (wheatfromchaff)



Series: everybody works [2]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games), Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Atlas CEO Rhys, M/M, Pre-Relationship, tim really needs to start thinking before he opens his stupid mouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-01 20:18:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10929306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheatfromchaff/pseuds/Wheat%20From%20Chaff
Summary: Everyone asked, sooner or later. Just whatdoyou do for a living, Tim? It was a hard one to hear, because he never quite knew how to answer.Or: Tim gets the job at Atlas, and meets the CEO for the first time.





	Working Title

Everyone asked, sooner or later. Just what _do_ you do for a living, Tim? It was a hard one to hear, because he never quite knew how to answer.

For a very long time, he killed people for money. That could be awkward to explain at a party, or shouting to be heard over the music in a bar. Nisha advised him to just tell people he was a freelancer, because that wasn’t far from the truth.

“And if they press me?” he asked her warily.

Nisha closed her compact with a click. She didn’t wear much make-up; just enough to make herself seem a little more awake, a little more perfect. Poreless and smooth, a perfect simulacrum of a human being.

“If they press you…” She considered him without looking very hard. She had other things on her mind, no doubt. “Tell ‘em you sell machine parts or something. Something boring, something that involves travel.”

“You could just tell them the truth,” Athena suggested.

“Is that what you do?” Tim asked, curious. “Does Janey know?”

Athena shrugged. She didn’t even look up from the maps she’d spread out onto the table. Back then, Janey was a sore subject and Tim always knew better than to push.

Nisha patted him on the shoulder. “Just give ‘em your most charming smile, say something witty, and run your hand up their thigh. Guaranteed they’ll forget they asked.”

“You may end up with broken glass in your face if you try,” Athena said.

Fortunately, it rarely came up because Tim didn’t meet a lot of people he didn’t already work with. Didn’t get invited to a lot of parties, which suited him.

And then, Tim got older, somehow. Tim eventually left that life, decided to stick around in one place for a while. Tried to work an honest job for a change.

* * *

Honest jobs were easy enough to come by, but Tim had a hard time keeping them. It wasn’t that he was incompetent—data entry and answering phones wasn’t too demanding—it was just that he had no interest in them. He couldn’t even feign it for a week, sometimes. He left more jobs in that year-long stretch after coming home than he’d taken in his entire life up to that point. The longest he managed to stick around in one job was 8 full weeks, and that was only because the office had a cat.

“So, what do you do?”

The stranger at the bar was good looking, and he clearly knew it. He’d been keeping a half-eye on Tim all night. Tim didn’t mind. It was nice to have a conversation with someone although, god, he’d never say that out loud.

“I do a lot of different things,” Tim said, and then he realised just what that sounded like when the handsome stranger grinned at him.

“Right now I’m in between jobs,” he said and that did the trick. He could see that spark die and couldn’t even say if he missed it.

* * *

It wasn’t desperation that drove him to the Atlas stronghold. He wasn’t worried about money, getting evicted, any of that. He had plenty of savings. He really couldn’t say why he kept coming back to Atlas, to that distinctive skyscraper that stabbed the horizon like a knife made of black glass. It was the give-away building, the obvious one in all the fly-by shots in all the movies that lets the viewer establish what city their heroes are in. The one that used to make Tim feel homesick, sometimes, when he watched some cable movie in a foreign hotel. He could rarely understand what the dubbed actors were saying, but the landscape of the city was a language he could still speak. An orientation he needed and missed.

But Atlas itself didn’t mean much to him. Maybe it was just curiosity that kept him coming back. Maybe he just wanted to see how far this would go. He hoped the question didn’t come up in the interview.

Tim approached a desk shaped like an art installation and told the woman nestled in its centre his name, his appointment. The first raised an eyebrow, the second raised her head. She made him stand and wait while she checked, double checked, called up for confirmation.

Eventually, she printed him a temporary pass. She eyed him like she thought he might shapeshift into a horse and the dream would end. A guard escorted him to the elevators. She punched in a special code, flashed her card.

“No eye scanner?” he asked. She gave him a look.

No one, it seemed, could believe this was happening.

* * *

“What do you do with all your time?” Another bar, another stranger. This one dressed to impress upon anyone looking that she meant business. That looking was fine, but anything else would come at a cost.

Tim was 19. He had a fake ID and a face that opened doors that probably should’ve stayed closed to someone his age, with his life experience. Getting beat up on the regular didn’t make you wise, but Tim didn’t know that yet.

Tim didn’t have a good answer. It felt like he got into trouble for a living.

In times like this, staring down people who looked as good as she looked, Tim still blushed and stuttered. When he got really nervous, he pretended to be Jack. Puff out his chest the way he’d seen his brother do so many times. Pretend like he was doing everyone a favour by being there, like his confidence could bounce bullets. He looked her over as discreetly as he could. He didn’t know, just yet, if he wanted to pay.

“I, uh. I guess you could say I get into trouble.” He laughed, like he meant it as a joke. She only smiled.

He went home alone that night.

* * *

“Do you know how many people get this far? You’ve jumped through an impressive amount of hoops. How many online interviews did we make you take?”

The man himself, or his first son anyway. Rhys Griffiths-Whyte, current CEO of Atlas, could be found on the very top floor of his very tall building, in his very big office. So far removed from the peasants in their $500 suits, in their Yves Saint Laurent coats, that walked their LaBoutins on the streets far below. Tim didn’t know how much Rhys’ suit cost. Or his nice haircut. He had an idea about his golden arm, but only because he’d gotten curious about the things Atlas made and he looked into it. There’d been no price listed for the ECHOeye, which said enough, Tim supposed.

“Only two,” he replied.

“Amazing. And the essay questions—you filled those out too? The ones where we asked you to explain your favourite invention and its impact on human society? Or—Todd, what was the other one? I’m blanking.”

The young-ish looking man in a blue and grey pinstriped two-piece leaned forward. The shine of all that product in his hair caught the purple-blue glow of one of the many screens Rhys had projected above his desk. Todd looked Teflon coated. It wasn’t just the hair, it was everything. His suit, his skin. Smooth and frictionless. He looked like if Tim tried to touch him, Tim’s hand would just skim off, repelled like water off a duck.

“We asked all applicants to explain one significant change they would make to human anatomy, and why,” he said.

Rhys smiled. He didn’t look as smooth as Todd. He looked sleek, the way a snake looked sleek in the tall grass. Tim thought if he touched him, his hand might come away bleeding.

“That’s right! So stupid! And you did it. This job doesn’t have anything to do with our cybernetics division, you know. You won’t even be allowed on the R&D floor unless I’m there with you. And, quite frankly, I won’t have any interest in hearing your opinion about what you might see down there.”

“I’m familiar with the job description, sir,” Tim said. He didn’t pretend to be Jack anymore, hadn’t done it in a long time. The anger that could flare inside of him as easy as striking a match didn’t burn quite as hot as it used to.

Rhys’ smile actually faded, a slow production that didn’t seem to involve the rest of his expression. He looked Tim over once again, that golden eye of his flaring briefly. It’d been doing that off and on, and only when Rhys looked at Tim. He couldn’t figure out why. Scanning him, maybe. Looking for trouble.

Well, it could keep on scanning. Tim hadn’t brought any with him.

“You’re very calm,” Rhys said. “Two online quizzes with irrelevant questions. And how many face-to-face interviews?”

“That depends. Do you consider phone and Skype interviews as face-to-face?”

“No.”

“Ah. Then, only three face-to-face. The first was an hour-long group interview.” Although it’d felt an awful lot longer. Especially with the other participants staring at Tim like he’d grown a second head.

Rhys nodded. He’d been twirling a golden stylus between his fingers since Tim had sat down. A gesture that seemed a little ostentatious to Tim.

“I remember watching the video,” Rhys said. “Seven people walked out. But not you.”

“Nope.”

“Do you know why I made you go through that circus?”

“I have a few guesses.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense. Let’s hear them.”

“Really. You want to hear what I’ve got to say?”

Rhys’ lips quirked into a smile. Tim leaned back.

“Alright.” He took a silent breath. “I figure you might be a sadistic bastard, with an emotionally stunted sense of humour. That you get your kicks out of petty power displays.”

Rhys’ smile didn’t move this time. It grew a little sharper. “There aren’t many people who’d come out all this way to insult me,” he said. “I know a lot of people want to. But those people might take a look at my well-trained and very well-armed battalion of security guards that roam the building and maybe have second thoughts.”

“Not me,” Tim said.

“Not you. In that vein, there aren’t many people who’d put the amount of time into it that you have. Seriously, three in-person interviews?”

“Four, now.”

For a split-second, Tim thought Rhys might actually laugh.

Tim was used to this. He was used to big offices, used to the sort of person who’d sit behind a big desk in their big chair and survey the person on the other side the way a hobbyist looks down at their model trains. Gleeful interest over something that was, essentially, very dull.

“That’s one guess,” Rhys said. “Do you have any others?”

Tim folded his hands in his lap. “My brother,” he said. Rhys’ eyebrow raised. “You think I’m a corporate spy and you wanted to get me isolated. Surrounded by all those guards you mentioned before.” Tim had seen more than a few in the short amount of time it took him to go from the front entrance up to the CEO’s office.

“You think I brought you out here to put a hit on you?” Rhys asked, smiling still.

Tim didn’t wince, although it was a close thing. “Nobody calls it that anymore, but yes,” he said.

“As a matter of fact, the idea that you might be a corporate spy has crossed my mind.” Rhys flicked the stylus, summoning a screen from the scrum waiting in the wings of his massive desk. “But if you are a spy, you’re either very good or very bad at it. Save for a string of office jobs at local mid-sized car dealerships, law firms specializing in personal injury cases, a hair salon, and a tech start-up that makes laundry apps, you don’t really have any experience.” Rhys shot a glance over the screen. “You lasted the longest at that start-up.”

“They had extracurricular incentives,” Tim said. He had stayed late more than once just to enjoy the quiet office with the cat.

“Before that,” Rhys went on, “you spent the ten years with the Lance.” Here he paused, although Tim couldn’t say what the effect he was trying to achieve. “Putting down the name of a mercenary company as your previous work experience is bold. Did you do that for Harmon, Leitch, and Kees LLC?”

“I like to change up my resumes when I apply for different professions,” Tim said.

“That’s smart.”

“Thanks. I got the tip from LinkdIn. To answer your question, when I applied to those places, I just put myself down as ‘travelling’.”

“But not for Atlas.”

“Didn’t seem appropriate. You wanted a bodyguard. I have some previous experience in that field,” Tim said. “I even have references, if you need ‘em.”

“I already know your references. The only reason I didn’t have you tranq’d and shipped back to Jack is because your reference is my head of security. And Athena vouched for you.”

Rhys fixed him with a hard look, but Tim was getting used to that face. It was easy to get distracted, by the hair, the suit, the shiny desk, the view out of those floor-to-ceiling windows behind his tall, black chair, but Tim was starting to see Rhys behind all of that flash. He’d heard from Jack that Rhys was pretty young.

Rhys _was_ young, and pretty.

Rhys tapped the end of his stylus against his desk, regarding Tim for a long moment. Tim enjoyed the view.

Finally, Rhys smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I think you’ll do just fine.”

Tim’s interest returned to the business at hand. “Really?” he asked.

“ _Really_?” Todd echoed.

“You’ll answer to me directly, of course,” Rhys said, calling up a few new screens. “We have a benefits package. I hear it’s pretty good. You already know the starting salary. You can start tomorrow.”

Tim felt blindsided and, judging by the amused look Rhys gave him, it showed plainly on his face. His cheeks grew warm.

“Ah. Thank you.” He pulled himself out of his chair, stretched out his hand.

Rhys reached over, took his hand, and pulled him closer. Until Tim was half bent over that big, shiny desk.

“I cannot wait until the press gets a load of you, Tim Lawrence,” he said. His human eye gleamed. He still had Tim’s hand in his cold, metal grip. “This is going to be a lot of fun.”

Tim just nodded. It wasn’t until he was out on the street, with an encrypted drive containing all the paperwork he needed to sign, that Rhys’ words caught up with him.

Just what the hell sort of Fifty Shades bullshit did he walk into?

* * *

“You look familiar. What is it you do again?”

“I’m, uh. I think I’m a bodyguard.”

“Oh. Oh! Right! I think I’ve seen you on TV.”

* * *

On the television, in the dailies, in the ‘bloids… Tim’s face started showing up everywhere. Rhys got attention almost everywhere he went. Tim knew from Jack that paparazzi would make themselves a nuisance if there was no one more famous, more drunk, or more naked around. Tim didn’t expect it to happen so _quickly_.

The first time Tim saw himself on the front page of the E! News’ website had been the night after Rhys had gone to see _La Cecchina,_ an invite that’d come from a business partner. They’d gotten box seats, usually reserved for the theatre company’s president. Tim couldn’t remember much about the opera itself. Something about a woman in a dress. He spent his time standing behind the row of seats, counting the minutes until he could clock off for the night.

The photos on the website were of Rhys leaving the venue, with Tim looking alert, walking just a few steps behind.

“It’s not a bad photo,” Rhys said. Tim stopped dead, face-to-face with his own past blown up in a holographic screen above Rhys’ desk. The office door swung shut behind him with barely a whisper.

“They got my good side. Don’t you think?” Rhys took his chin with his metal hand and tilted his face for Tim’s approval.

“Jesus.” Tim approached the desk slowly, the paper bag in his hand nearly forgotten. “Where—?”

“You don’t remember the photographers hanging outside the Royal last night?” Rhys sat back, examining Tim from narrowed eyes. “Not a great sign for my new bodyguard.”

“I remember them,” Tim snapped. A small knot, about four of them, all armed with those little cameras with big lenses, and bigger lights. One of the photos showed Tim with his head turned slightly towards them, taking notice with a frown.

“Where the hell were these posted?” he demanded.

“Online.” Rhys flicked the screen to a new image.

“ _Why_?”

“I have fans, Tim. A wealthy, handsome, industrialist, philanthropist billionaire bachelor like me? I have entire websites dedicated to me. Message boards. People write _fanfiction_.”

“They write—? No, never mind, don’t tell me, I don’t care.”

Rhys looked over at Tim with an expression that begged for violence. A mixture of smug, amused, and condescending that, should the hypothetical jury see it, would likely get Tim absolved of hypothetical murder charges.

“You know, they thought you were your brother,” Rhys said. Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. “I think some muckrakers actually tried to call Jack for a statement this morning. Can you imagine? I hope they tried to call him first thing.” Rhys sounded gleeful; another piece towards Tim’s building ‘just cause for murder’ case.

“I don’t even wear the damn mask,” Tim grumbled. He set Rhys’ breakfast order on the desk.

Rhys laughed. “I know! That’s what makes it so good. But now they’ve got it all straight. Look.” Rhys gestured with his stylus like a conductor, pulling up three new screens, all with different news articles. “They know it’s the long rumoured but seldom seen twin brother. Go on and take a look. Do you think they’ve done a good job with your profile?”

Tim glanced at the headlines. They all looked like puff pieces, the sort of goofy thing he might read if he’d hit his head and had to kill time in the ER waiting room.

“Sure,” Tim said. He was done with this now, he’d decided. He unpacked his boss’ breakfast, grabbing a plate and some cutlery from the sideboard.

“I think I’ll put out a statement,” Rhys said, swivelling his chair back and forth. “Let them all know that Handsome Jack Lawrence’s twin brother picks up coffee for me every day.”

“Breakfast and lunch, too,” Tim said, setting the plate and the thermos of coffee in front of Rhys.

Rhys glanced at him, his smile fading. “You’re not as angry about this as I’d thought you’d be.”

“If this is your idea of giving me a hard time, I’ll tell you right now that you’ve got your work cut out for you. I spent sixteen years sharing a bedroom with the king of obnoxious assholes.” Tim shook out the cloth napkin with a snap. He knelt down, set the napkin gently into Rhys’ lap.

He’d never done this before; he’d never even gotten this close, this intimate. He could hear it when Rhys drew in a sharp breath. He could see the slight flush on his neck.

“If you just brought me on because you want to humiliate my brother, that’s your business,” Tim said. He spoke quietly, evenly. Rhys looked down at him with an expression couldn’t easily read. He didn’t really try. “As far as I’m concerned, as long as you pay me, I’m yours.”

Rhys’ breathing hitched. He looked away. That flush on his neck had spread upwards, onto those round cheeks. Tim bit back a smug smile of his own.

“Do you need anything else?” he asked.

“No,” Rhys said, his pink face impassive once more. “We’re done for now.”

And here Tim thought they’d just gotten started. 

* * *

“So… Tim, was it? Tim, what do you do for a living?”

“In theory, I’m a bodyguard.”

* * *

The job seemed straight forward at first. It helped that it wasn’t Tim’s first time working this sort of gig. He’d worked similar contracts during his days with the Lance.

Back then, he’d spend days, sometimes entire months, playing babysitter to someone in a remote mansion in the middle of the jungle, or out on the side of the mountain, waiting for some rival with a score to settle to come storm the place. Sometimes, after a long enough time spent with the client, he started to root for the rival.

“You must have some good stories,” Rhys told him, one day over lunch.

Tim paused, his hand poised over the samosas. “Stories about…?”

“The sort of people you worked for in the past. Did you ever fall for some Columbian drug lord’s beautiful daughter? Making eyes with the mistress?” Rhys leaned over his chana masala, his eyes gleaming with depraved imaginings. “Did you ever steal away to some far-off palapa for a clandestine meeting?”

 “I don’t even know what a ‘palapa’ is,” Tim said. “But, no. I never had clandestine meetings.”

Rhys looked sceptical. “You never once tried to mix business with pleasure?”

“Nope,” Tim said through a mouthful of naan.

Rhys sat back with an attempt at a scowl on his face. “You know, for a big bad former mercenary, you’re really kind of dull.”

He’d been working for Rhys for a little over a month by that point, and the murdering urge he’d experienced during their first few days together had faded considerably. Tim had begun to feel as if he’d gotten a handle on his new boss. Rhys was obnoxious, sure, but under all that diamond-hard corporate coating, he was a bit of a harmless idiot.

Still. Sometimes Tim wanted to reach over and flick him between his eyes.

But even in those first few weeks, Tim knew that this job wasn’t exactly as to the letter as he might’ve expected. He’d been out of the game for a while, but he felt pretty certain most bodyguards didn’t go around fetching coffee orders, picking up dry-cleaning, and running data drives to the boss’ apartment at 11pm at night because Rhys had to prepare for an early-morning meeting with the Korean manufacturing supply company at 6am and he needed those reports today, Tim, and no, he can’t just get them over the intranet, that’s not how encryption works, _Tim_.

Not long after their Indian lunch, Rhys began giving Tim reports to read and take notes for him.

“Just give me the gist,” he said, sending the files to Tim’s desktop with a flick of his stylus.

Tim opened the first file, his eyebrows raised. “Boss, this one’s almost 90 pages.”

“Right. I’ll need the bullet points on every report in that cluster by…” He glanced over at the system clock. “Ooh. Sooner the better, really.”

“Isn’t this Todd’s job?”

“Todd’s busy and you’re not. Chop, chop, handsome.”

Tim had made the mistake of doing a good job with that assignment, which meant Rhys had only given him more. And then he added data entry to Tim’s duties.

“Look through every new report that comes in, pick out the keywords, and enter them into the searchable database.”

Tim stared at the list of file names that stretched off his screen. “Isn’t this what algorithms are for?”

“Who told you about algorithms?” Rhys grinned at the look on his face. “Algorithms can make mistakes. And I prefer a human touch. Try to get those all done before tomorrow, will you?”

Tim grumbled, and wondered if it was worth pointing out that humans were just as liable to make mistakes.

In the end, he just did it. And he did it well. His second mistake.

It went on like that for weeks. For a while, it seemed like Rhys had something new every day for Tim to do. Organize his files, answer a few emails, sit in on a few meetings, attend a few departmental demonstrations, stand behind me and look intimidating when the board member comes by… on and on.

“At some point, you are going to ask me to protect your body again, right?” Tim asked after the end of their third month.

Rhys leaned his head onto his metal hand, smiling at Tim over a stack of screens. “Have you been thinking about my body, Tim?”

Truth be told, he’d been thinking about a great deal of things. He’d expected the job to remain menial, humiliating, public. He expected Rhys to parade him around town like a prize poodle. And while that did still happen on occasion, there hadn’t been any more photos of them online.

“Mostly just trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing here,” Tim said.

“You’re doing your job, of course,” Rhys said.

“Which is…?”

Rhys took in a breath, like a man prepared to deliver news that he would enjoy giving, and the listener might not enjoy receiving.

“What you told me before,” Rhys said, steepling his fingers.

Tim let his expression do the talking for him. When Rhys got like this, it was best not to engage.

“Remember? You said that so long as I’m paying you, you are—and I quote—‘all mine’.” He leaned back, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “I’m still paying you, ergo you are doing what I want you to do. That’s your job description. Happy?”

Tim kept his gloved hands flat on his desk. He felt as if he was breathing too quick, too loud. Something young and foolish shivered inside of Tim’s chest at Rhys’ words.

Alright. Maybe he _had_ been thinking about Rhys’ body. Among other things.

“Is that why you won’t give me my own office?” Tim asked, his voice a little rough.

Rhys pouted. “What’s wrong with my office?”

“It’s just a little strange, me sitting here in the corner.” Tim reached behind his neck before he remembered he was still wearing a piece of expensive technology. He lowered his hand. “I feel like I’m perpetually at the kids' table.”

Rhys scoffed. “The price tag for that desk had five digits, Tim. Hardly the stuff of kids’ tables. And how are you supposed to guard my beautiful body when you’re all the way out there?”

_God_. Tim wanted to roll up a magazine and smack that look off of Rhys’ face. He wanted to reach over his massive desk, grab Rhys by his collar, and—

He shut that thought down, but not soon enough. He could feel the heat crawling up his neck.

“So. Are you happy?” Rhys asked, already returning to his work.

Tim let out a long breath as quietly as he could.

* * *

“Well, then. What’s a big, strong man like you do for a living, anyway?”

“Look… I’m really flattered by your interest, and any other day I might actually try to take you up on it, but. I’m not really in a great place for this sort of thing right now. Sorry.”

* * *

“So, what exactly is my job title, anyway?”

“What does it matter?”

“Well, I’ll need to know what to put on my resume when I finally get fed up with my insane boss.”

“Please. Don’t kid yourself, Tim. You won’t quit on me.”

“Really.”

“If you haven’t left by now, you aren’t going to. You like it here.”

“ _Really_.”

“Really. As for your job title… I don’t care. Just tell them what you told me. That you’re all mine.”

* * *

Tim and his big fucking mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> Not my best ending, tbh.
> 
> The next part of this AU has been written and will be posted soon. Like, in a week or more, probably.


End file.
